WEATHER girl Kirsty McCabe admits the climate is better down South, but she says she still can’t wait to return to Scotland for good now that her little one is starting to talk.

The Ayrshire-born presenter has been living down South since 2008, when she landed a job on TV shows GMTV and Daybreak presenting the weather.

Now that the 37-year-old blonde, who studied at Edinburgh and Oxford universities, has relocated to Southampton for her stint as presenter on BBC South Today, she admits she’s keener than ever to return to her roots.

Kirsty, who gave birth to Ethan on Christmas Day 2010, revealed: “At the moment I’d like to find work up in Scotland if I can convince Renato, my husband, to come back up North.

“He’s from South Africa so is worried about it being a bit wet. You miss the family once you have one of your own and realise how important they are to you.”

She adds: “I try to come up every so often because it’s nice for Ethan to see his cousins and grandparents.

“It would be great to find some work in Scotland. Maybe I could bring some sunshine with me.”

The presenter clearly enjoys being in the spotlight and is interested in getting back into acting, having once been part of a youth theatre and playing various stage roles before being discovered for her meteorological prowess.

She said: “I‘d love to do some acting again. It would be great to come in to Waterloo Road while it’s filming in Scotland and do some sort of weather lesson or maybe appear on children’s TV and get on Balamory doing it.”

She might be half joking, but the opportunity to appear on children’s TV is something more relevant to Kirsty now that she is a mum.

She says she has changed a lot from the days before motherhood when she would go out drinking and partying into the night with her pals.

Weather girl Kirsty McCabe with son Ethan

She said: “Having a child changes your perspective on things more than anything else.

“You don’t want to do certain things that you did in the past any more. You think more about your child and family and it changes everything in the way you make decisions.

I feel blessed to have a child, but your social life changes and you don’t go out as much because you’ve got a wee one and you don’t want to palm him off on others.

“Things you turned your nose up to years ago end up being things you’re happy to do these days.

“These days, instead of going out I’d rather go home for a glass of wine.”

Now used to the fun and mayhem of children’s activities, Kirsty last week returned to Scotland to take part in a record-breaking attempt to build the world’s largest alien from plastic bricks, in conjunction with Cartoon Network and children’s TV programme Ben 10, at Glasgow’s St Enoch Centre.

She said: “I’ve never taken part in a Guinness World Record before and this alien was absolutely gigantic.

“The amount of people taking part in the sculpture was immense and I took my family along with me. It’s the kind of thing that Ethan loves to try and knock down.”

Kirsty enjoys telling us all about the weather, but she admits she often gets the blame for the lack of sunshine in Scotland and this summer, in particular, has felt the wrath of many due to freak flooding and climate changes.

She said: “I get blamed for it when it’s raining and horrible. I think you have to not let it bother you. Besides, when it is sunny, people thank you.”

“The jet stream has been in the wrong place and some parts of the US have had a ridiculous amount of heat and drought. We’ve had far too much rain and disappointing temperatures but it is looking better now.

“I think we all remember long hot summers from our childhoods.”

As a respected meteorologist, Kirsty doesn’t believe the world is turning into a real-life version of the film The Day After Tomorrow, where the planet is battered by freak storms and floods, but is still concerned about climate change.

She said: “We went to watch Day After Tomorrow when I was at Met college and it was an outing of 10 forecasters saying it wouldn’t happen from a ‘weather’ point of view.

“It does worry me about climate change, and global warming is certainly causing more extreme weather events on a local level, including extreme rainfall.”

Kirsty is now used to being asked to take on a variety of work but would stop short of posing in underwear.

She said: “Someone asked me about a lingerie thing but I wasn’t ready for that. I wouldn’t be brave enough to go on a catwalk. I’d maybe do some photos, but it’s nice to be asked.”

?For more about the Guinness World Record, visit www.ben10record.co.uk for a sneak peek of the new Ben 10: Omniverse series coming to Cartoon Network this autumn.